v3-1.png

Reimaging Unstructured Storage Platform Upgrade Experience

UX Designer    |   5 months Remote Internship    |    Enterprise product design
 

User Research

Due to the complexity of the product and the scope of this project, I spent 1.5 months learning and conducting foundational research. I interviewed more than a dozen of internal “dog-fooding“ storage admins, remote support service engineers, and external customers. Additionally, I also got multiple product designers outside of my organization for a focus group sharing their perspectives and lessons learned on designing for upgrades.

Screen Shot 2020-07-30 at 12.11.31 PM.png

Research Process

 
 

Research Findings

User Group

 
Group 53 (1).png
 

Main Painpoints

Performing an upgrade faces many risks of negative impact on storage’s production efficacy, and chances of losing data when a node doesn’t come back up during a reboot process. Users often hesitate about performing an upgrade

 
 

01 Low visibility of system status during an upgrade

  • User don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes

    The image on the left shows how the current GUI looks like when there are errors during an upgrade process. It gives very little and unclear information.

  • User felt unsure about whether things are going okay

    The current interface easily causes concerns, confusion, and panics because of its poor information.

error.png

02 Troubleshooting is difficult 

  • Error messages are hard to find and it’s not easy to understand

    Image on the left shows how the troubleshooting messages getting presented in the Command Line Interface.

  • Error messages are not helpful in finding solutions

    Messages on the left is repetitive and is still pushing users away — “please refer to KB#542999 for more information.“

isi_logs.png
 

User Journey Mapping

— Old Workflow —

Based on the current upgrade workflow on OneFS, I mapped out each stage of user’s journey with major pain points I discovered through user interviews and performing upgrades on my own.

Screen Shot 2020-07-30 at 4.55.01 PM.png
 

— My Proposed New Workflow —

Based on my design principles and observations of competitor’s upgrade process, I ideated and designed a new workflow for OneFS upgrade.

Screen Shot 2020-07-30 at 4.58.35 PM.png